A Study in Black
by The King's Soldier
Summary: "In the final generation of that proud house, there were five children bearing the name of Black. Four of them would eventually grow up to betray its proud values." A brief look at each of the five members of the last generation of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black and how the choices they all made played into its eventual downfall.


Author's Note: This piece is something completely different from what I usually write. The style is far more formal, but I actually had a ton of fun writing it. Originally, it was just going to be a brief look at Andromeda, Sirius, and Regulus Black and what factors led them to become the rebels they did. But then it morphed into more of an analysis of the entire last generation of the House of Black. Some of the parallels are slightly exaggerated for the sake of this piece, so you may not agree with all of it. Even I think that some of it's a bit of a stretch. But in a lot of ways, this piece all but wrote itself. Hopefully you'll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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 **A Study in Black**

 **rebel** | reb·el | _n._ 1\. a person who resists authority, control, or convention

Once upon a time, for that is how these things generally begin, there was a proud wizarding family known as the House of Black. As one of the oldest magical families in Britain, the House of Black could trace its lineage all the way back to the Middle Ages. Its members were extremely proud of its pure, magical legacy. They were also incredibly wealthy and highly influential in the wizarding world. At the height of its power, the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black was a truly mighty house. But like all great things, it eventually came to an end.

The name of Black is now extinct in the wizarding world, as is the ancient house that once bore it. However, the House of Black was crumbling from within long before it was obliterated from without. In the final generation of that proud house, there were five children bearing the name of Black. Four of them would eventually grow up to betray its proud values. One heir alone remained true, although it seems highly probably that they were not truly sane by the end. Perhaps that says more about the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black than the fates of all the other heirs combined.

First to abandon the family name was Andromeda, the middle daughter of Cygnus and Druella Black. Andromeda was the rebel they should have foreseen. She had been spending far too much time with those of impure blood. It was to be expected that her own purity would eventually be tarnished. However, she had always been the sort to question convention, and her parents had always assumed she would eventually grow out of her childish habit. They fully expected this willful teenage rebellion to end with their daughter coming to her senses and embracing the life that was expected of her.

But it was not to be. Instead, Andromeda had the audacity to fall in love with a Muggle-born mongrel. Horrified, her family gave her a choice: renounce the Mudblood and his heresy or be cast out of the House of Black forever. Instead of recanting, Andromeda chose exile. She left her family behind to marry the man she loved. Actually, to be perfectly accurate, Andromeda left no one. She made it very clear that the channels of communication would always be open should her family choose to seek her out. But they never did. Betrayed and shamed, her family severed all contact. They carved her from their hearts and burned her from the family tree. Her name was never uttered again within the walls of her childhood home. And from that day forward, there were only four heirs to the House of Black.

The second to betray his heritage was Sirius, eldest son of Orion and Walburga Black. Sirius was the rebel they all saw coming. He had always been a strong-willed boy, and even from an early age he had developed a strong dislike of his relatives. His parents, however, had managed to hold out some measure of hope for their son's repentance. That hope began to die when young Sirius arrived at Hogwarts. The boy was sorted into Gryffindor House rather than proud Slytherin as the rest of his family had been. From there it only got worse. He made friends with half-bloods and blood traitors. Horrid Muggle pictures began to appear on his walls. Then he began spouting mongrel propaganda and lies. By the time he left the house at age sixteen, his parents were almost glad to see him go. Almost, but not quite. Still, the family line had to be kept pure. And so Sirius too was blasted from the family tree. But unlike his cousin, Sirius never looked back. He was proud to have shaken off what he viewed as the shackles of his hateful heritage.

Fate, however, seems to possess a deep love of irony. Sirius would return to his childhood home many years later as its sole master after his parents and brother had all perished. The disowned son of the House of Black would become its last surviving male heir. In still a further twist of fate, Sirius would eventually be murdered by none other than his elder cousin Bellatrix Lestrange, née Black. In her fanatical quest to obliterate all those who stood against the values drilled into her by her family, Bellatrix would also inadvertently wipe that proud and ancient name from the face of the Earth.

The next Black heir to shirk the traditional values of his house was Regulus, the younger brother of Sirius. Regulus was the rebel no one saw coming. A true pure-blood prince, he embodied everything his proud family expected him to be. He lived and breathed the Black family motto – Toujours Pur, "Always Pure." Upon entering Hogwarts, Regulus became a member of Slytherin House, where he was recruited for the prestigious Slug Club and became the Seeker for his house team. At the tender age of sixteen, he joined the forces of the Dark Lord, who young Regulus idolized. His parents could not have been more proud.

Regulus rose quickly through the Death Eater ranks and was soon given a ringside seat to witness the true brutality of his idol. It was then that the first seeds of doubt began to form in the mind of the young scion. But the straw that finally broke the dragon's back was something no one could have foreseen. For Regulus Black had a weakness most peculiar to one of his lineage – the love of a lowly house-elf. And the moment the Dark Lord abandoned that house-elf to death was the moment he lost Regulus as a servant. The young Black turned on his master, even going so far as to attempt to destroy one of the magical relics protecting the Dark Lord. In the end, that act cost him his life. Young Regulus drowned alone in a forgotten cave, dragged to his death by the creations of his former master. Yet he faced his end both willingly and bravely. It turned out he had far more in common with his disowned Gryffindor brother than anyone had ever thought.

And yet, at the same time, maybe his betrayal of the old ways was not so great after all. The true purpose of his final journey was kept a secret from all he those he cared about, even the house-elf for whom he cared so much and to whom he entrusted the completion of his final mission. This secrecy protected the remaining members of the House of Black from the Dark Lord's wrath. However, it also meant that no one knew the true bravery of young Regulus until many years later when a young man in spectacles found a fake locket with a letter inside. That was the true tragedy of Regulus Black – not that he died far too young but that no one knew the true reason behind it.

The fourth and final heir to break with the proud traditions of the House of Black was Narcissa, youngest daughter of Cygnus and Druella Black. Narcissa was the rebel no one expected. Much like her cousin Regulus, Narcissa fully embraced the old ways. She was a perfect pure-blood princess who recited all the right philosophies and behaved in all the appropriate ways. She was sorted into Slytherin House where she met her future husband, a highly respectable pure-blood match. Though never a Death Eater herself, Narcissa made it clear that she supported the organization of which her husband was a member as well as the ideals they represented. She held firmly to those values throughout both of the brutal wizarding wars.

War, however, took a heavy toll on both her husband and son. The harsh manner in which the Dark Lord treated them both was what eventually pushed Narcissa to the brink. When asked to verify whether Harry Potter, the Dark Lord's greatest enemy, was truly dead, Narcissa found herself presented with a choice – tell the truth out of loyalty to the Dark Lord and the pure-blood utopia he represented or lie in the hopes of being reunited with her son. Narcissa chose her son. Some might say that choosing her own blood was not a real betrayal of her heritage, but history clearly indicates that the House of Black had no qualms about casting aside its own members so long as it furthered the purist ideals of the remainder. Those who are still not convinced of Narcissa's rebellion need only look to her actions upon reaching Hogwarts with the rest of the Dark Lord's army. She and her husband both deserted the forces of the Dark Lord to search out their son. While it is highly unlikely that they fully abandoned the old ways after the end of the war, their actions still acknowledged that there was a higher power to be considered – the bonds of family. And though this might not constitute a complete betrayal of the House of Black, the shift in mentality it signified can be described as nothing less than astronomical.

Of the five final heirs to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, Bellatrix alone remained truly loyal to her heritage. So fanatical was her loyalty that many actually considered her to be insane. Her greatest dream was to cleanse the wizarding world of impurities. She began that quest by readily cleansing her own family, murdering both her cousin and her niece with no remorse whatsoever. Bellatrix might have changed her surname after making a suitable marriage to Rodolphus Lestrange, but she never forgot the values that the family of her birth had instilled within her. Even as the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black fell down around her, Bellatrix remained true to its ideals. She was a loyal Black to the very end. But of course, by that point, there was really nothing left of that once proud house to be loyal to.

And so it was that the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black fell into ruin. Its sons were gone, leaving that prestigious name as nothing more than a whisper of the past. The purely magical ancestry it had so proudly heralded did manage to live on in two boys, but only as a shadow of what it had once been. One of the boys, the pure-blood grandson of Narcissa Malfoy, would grow up to marry a half-blood witch. The other boy was the half-blood grandson of the blood traitor Andromeda Tonks, and so it hardly mattered that the witch he would eventually marry was of pure blood. The bloodline had already been tainted. The precious pure blood that the House of Black had so proudly flaunted was therefore completely diluted within a single generation of its fall. The family's ancestral home at 12 Grimmauld Place was passed into the hands of blood traitors, half-bloods and Muggle-borns, and the family tree tapestry that had adorned its walls for so many generations was removed and burned. Thus the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black passed into the history books, a relic of a bygone age.

One final note should be made here as to the nature of the final generation of the Black family. All five heirs, the four traitors and the one who remained true, chose their paths because of love. To be fair, there was certainly a decent amount of ideological belief that backed up their decisions. But for all five of them, those choices were sparked by love. For Andromeda, it was the love of a young man who would become her husband. For Sirius, that love was for the friends he had made at Hogwarts and the family and acceptance they gave to him. For Regulus, it was the love a house-elf. For Narcissa, that spark was the love of her son. And Bellatrix remained loyal to the old ways out of love for a dark wizard she could never have.

Of still further note is the fact that the four heirs who rebelled were the four whose love was returned. Bellatrix's never was. Whether or not the returned love and the acts of rebellion are related is somewhat debatable. However, the point still proves quite interesting. The rebels loved and were loved back, and perhaps it was that love that gave them the courage to break free. They discovered that there was more to life than they had been taught, more than wealth and bloodlines and ancient names. And in the end, perhaps it was not mere rebellion that brought down the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Perhaps it was a magic far simpler and yet infinitely more complex than any the heirs to that illustrious line had been taught. Perhaps what truly caused that proud house to crumble away was the one gift it could never truly provide to its children – love.

Today the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black is all but extinct. Its proud bloodline is no longer pure, and only two women yet live who once bore that distinguished name. When they finally leave this world, they will take the last vestiges of the House of Black with them. And while it is highly doubtful that the world such as it is will allow them both to live happily ever after, that is nevertheless how these things generally end. So that is precisely how we shall leave them.

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So what did you think? Please take a minute to leave a quick review letting me know. It'll mean the world to me. If you like my writing, feel free to check out my profile and see if any of my other projects look interesting. Most of my pieces are actually written in a far more conversational tone. Right now I've only got one other Harry Potter story - an on-going multi-chapter piece that shows the progression of Lily Potter's relationship with each of the Marauders. But I have a few other one shots in the works that would relate to the House of Black, as well as a possible project on the Next Generation. So make sure to follow me if you want to be notified of those. Thanks for reading!


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